The treatment of waste water such as sewage or other biodegradable materials under pressure by air or oxygen is known to the art.
Such treatment has been done in a pressurized state as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,477,581, which issued to Donald M. Stearns, a co-inventor of the present application, on Nov. 11, 1969.
While the process of U.S. Pat. No. 3,477,581 is an advance in the treatment of sewage and other waste water, it requires one or more relatively large pressurized tanks and is not well suited to individual treatment systems, or to systems for small communities which may otherwise use septic tanks and the like.
The pressurization of the waste water as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,477,581 will increase the absorption rate of the oxygen used, but still is a relatively complex and cumbersome way to absorb oxygen by the sewage, and requires a large volume closed tank and is considered a batch process.
It has been established that the absorption of oxygen is an exponential function of pressure with the exponent greater than 1.0. This relationship is a partial basis for this application.